you could look at the international trading environment and wonder about that. to me, and this is the answer to the question, and john would agree, the world in which the denied states is still strong but all the institutions are eroding is not a world i want to live in and therefore the united states does have an interest in trying its best to show up these institutions. >> bob is coming my way. this is great. >> a couple quick points. number one, my thesis is not that these institutions are independent. they are in fused with power and instruments of power and they are used to signal limits on power, power is never divorced from institutions. and in that regard, i argue that the u.s. has been so great on the world stage because it's tied the power to the institutions that spoke to make power more durable and expensive, but also making it more limited and less based on the indiscriminate arbitrary use of power in the traditional sense. so there is an argument about how the institutions can allow for the powerful state to be more influential by allowing to signa